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It's every marketer's nightmare: The positive website traffic you've been helping your client to achieve has reversed — seemingly overnight — and traffic has taken a nosedive.

It's easy to blame constant Google algorithm changes for the steep decline, but in reality, there are numerous possible reasons for a website's traffic to take a sudden, sharp turn for the worse. It's critical to get to the root of the problem so you can course-correct as quickly as possible.

To help you diagnose your client's web traffic woes, take a look at these 11 potential reasons for the drop, suggested by members of theForbes Agency Council.

Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in.

Images courtesy of FAC members.

1. HTTP To HTTPS Migration

When Google Chrome announced it was going to mark non-secure pages with a big red mark, many websites started rushing to switch from HTTP to HTTPS. However, when moving from HTTP to HTTPS, you need to have a migration plan. I've seen website traffic dramatically drop after the move from HTTP to HTTPS because they missed adding 301 redirects. -Loren Baker,Foundation Digital

2. Accidental Page Analytics Removal

My first step is to ensure that analytics are properly implemented. We've often found cases where analytics have been inadvertently removed from some pages, or a new technology was implemented that doesn't have it. As an example, Accelerated Mobile Pages get implemented and organic search visits plummet, but it's because AMP has its own analytics script implementation that wasn't done. -Douglas Karr,DK New Media

3. 'NoIndex' Directives

A common practice for developers is to block search engines from crawling their dev environments using a "no index" directive in the website's robots.txt file. While that is a best practice for dev environments, many times this "small" detail is forgotten when the website changes are pushed live, resulting in lost search engine traffic. It's simple to fix and simple to find. -Jon Clark,Fuze SEO, LLC

4. Lack Of Quality Content

Content is still king and it remains a primary driver of website traffic. Whether traffic is driven by search, social, email or another marketing channel, it's essential to have powerful content that draws the reader in and keeps them coming back for more. Also, less is more: avoid content overload, watch your campaign frequency, and make your content helpful while staying true to your brand. -Paula Chiocchi,Outward Media, Inc.

5. Search Engine Penalties

Often, clients look for help after realizing their site went from visible to invisible overnight. Such drastic ranking changes are typically related to a penalty. Search engines have strict criteria to rank a page and anyone who is flagged for gaming the system is penalized. Possibilities include bad links, keyword stuffing, cloaking or any other means of artificially inflating your relevance. -Ricardo Casas,Fahrenheit Marketing

Our strategy is to start at the technical side before we start coming up with strategies on why traffic has lowered. Most of the time, if you see a major negative shift in visits or traffic, it is not due to a Google issue, it's due to a site issue. After you confirm the site is up (no server errors, 404s, etc.), visible (no CSS/code errors) and indexable (robots.txt), go from there. -David Kley,Web Design and Company

8. A Major Change, Either To Google Or Your Site/Operations

Look in this order: Did Google release a major algorithm change? Were you assigned a manual Google penalty? Have you made any significant changes recently (e.g., new website design, hosting, marketing agency or an SEO overhaul)? Has your competition dramatically increased? Were you assigned an algorithmic Google penalty? Usually, significant changes were recently made. - Adam Draper,Gladiator Law Marketing

9. Not Providing What Your Customer Really Wants From You

As the world becomes more transparent and the internet levels the playing field, shoppers are looking to learn more from impartial sources. When consumers stop coming to the mothership, look for endemic sources that provide the same content but in an environment that is perceived to be impartial. This may not be a bad thing. Think about what the consumer really wants. -Randy Hughes,Carmichael Lynch

10. Website Redesign

Oftentimes, recent design changes on a client’s website is a major cause of decreases in traffic. Maybe interlinking or the new site architecture wasn’t properly implemented into the new website. Sometimes newly added copy, images or videos made your website slower and those won’t mix well with search engines. Continually perform website audits to effectively understand your website’s traffic. -Solomon Thimothy,OneIMS

11. Google Analytics Traffic Channels

There are several channels that may cause the decline (or increase) in website traffic, including organic search, direct traffic, referrals, social or other traffic. When traffic trends downward (or upward), we first look at Google Analytics to identify which channel we need to investigate. By breaking down traffic into channels, you can determine the real reasons and issues behind traffic trends. -Brett Farmiloe,Markitors Website Development